The pharmaceutical industry, contract research organizations, academia, and government entities routinely test the efficacy and safety of new chemical entities using intravenous (usually) infusion in lab animals including, for example, rats, dogs and nonhuman primates. While some acute infusion studies may be performed in a small number of lab animals (e.g., ≦10) over several minutes or hours, large-scale “toxicology” infusion studies of, for example, several hundred rats or, for example, 10's of larger animals such as dogs or nonhuman primates for periods lasting, for example, from 30-90 days may also be performed.
Medical infusion pumps (e.g., electromechanical medical infusion pumps) may be used during these studies (as well as in other veterinary and/or human medical applications). There are numerous types of electromechanical medical infusion pumps including syringe, peristaltic, diaphragm, large volume, stationary (“pole mount”), and portable (“ambulatory”). These pumps may be used to deliver a substance (such as a drug) at a controlled delivery rate to, for example, a laboratory test animal. Lab animal infusion and human-use infusion may share similar pump technology. The methods of use in each field may differ in that human-use infusion (e.g., in a healthcare application) may be tailored to a single patient's needs while lab animal infusion (e.g., in an industrial application) may apply common parameters to multiple animals.
Animals may be connected to a medical infusion pump (for example, a syringe pump, though other pumping mechanisms may also be used) through a catheter, tubing, tether, fluid swivel, etc. Usually, one pump is used per animal and operators may program and monitor each pump manually. Operators may manually enter a delivery rate into a pump, load a substance-filled syringe for the pump, and then activate the pump (e.g., by pressing a start button). Operators may also interact with numerous medical and monitoring devices involved in the study. The process of loading, starting, and stopping the pump, recording data from medical and monitoring devices, and, for example, responding to pump alarms may be manually documented by the operator (e.g., on a clipboard). Because studies often involve large numbers of animals, manually setting up numerous pumps may be time consuming and tedious. In addition, Good Laboratory Practices (GLP's) (including documentation of processes, data collection, and study results) are required by regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Manually documenting the processes, data collection, and study results may also be time consuming, tedious and subject to human error.